Again, the form of family bond which demanded that a man take to wife the widow of his dead brother and "raise up children to the name" of the deceased had a long but not a permanent life. In the well-known passage from Deuteronomy, the 25th chapter, the faithful are commanded that "if brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall ... take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother unto her. And the first-born ... shall succeed in the name of his brother that is dead, that his name be not blotted out of Israel." The same passage shows that while it was doubtless at first an imperative social law, there came a time when the living brother had a choice as to whether or not he should take to wife the widow of one who had died. Perhaps there might have been an economic pressure that made it difficult to perform this ancient duty. Perhaps there might have been objection from the wife or wives already in command of the household matters. Perhaps the widow was sometimes of a type to make the brotherly and family duty seem very hard. At any rate, there came a time when, as the writer in Deuteronomy says, "If the man like not to take his brother's wife" he could refuse the family service. It cost him, however, in such cases a severe ordeal. He could be haled before the elders on the complaint that he "refused to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel." The widow "could loose his shoe from his feet and spit in his face" and say "so shall it be done unto the man that doth not build up his brother's house." The large requirement for the brother, thus indicated, passed outward to the next of kin in certain circumstances. There are many deeply interesting accounts of readjustment of family life through the taking over by the living of duties once undertaken by the dead. The lovely idyl of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, shows this widely spreading brother-duty. Here the mother-in-law, so sweet and so wise that her sons' wives loved her deeply, shrewdly manages a contact between Ruth and Boaz to the lasting service of her son's inheritance of name and land. The whole story is redolent of the finer side of ancient forms of familial duty, the man being rich and generous enough to take on his more remote relative's responsibilities, the young widow being sweet and charming enough to capture the interest of the rich man even before he knows who she is, and the mother-in-law showing statesmanship of the highest order in managing the affair, together with such fine character of her own that all respect and love her.